“Not in the fact. Of course not. It would be a bit like believing in a flat earth, wouldn’t it? But I believe in the proposition right enough. It’s what you might call the working hypothesis of Christianity.”
“Simple, isn’t it, after all?” He himself was unsure whether he spoke in irony or not.
The All Clear sounded after he was back in bed. For a little while he lay awake, without quite owning to himself what he was waiting for. He hadn’t really supposed for a moment that Ralph would ring. It had been good enough to scare Bunny.
“Can’t you sleep, Odell? Is it the leg?”
“It’s not too bad, Nurse, thanks. I wouldn’t mind some A.P.C. next time you’re passing.”
The telephone was silent. Laurie thought, He’s been in hospital himself, he knows what an uproar it makes if it rings late. Sensible of him really. Of course, he’s probably still asleep. Bunny will just come in and—
“Oh, thank you, Nurse. No, I’ll be fine. I’ll drop off in a minute.”
The All Clear was a long time going. I wonder what it was like back there. If anything happened to him, there’d be no one to tell me.
9
“HERE, SPUD.”
“HELLO,” SAID Laurie, peering into the bathroom from which Reg’s voice had come.
“Thought I recognized your step. Have to listen for it now. Just a bit heavy on the one foot, that’s all.”
“Want any help?” asked Laurie, coming in. Reg hadn’t needed any since the days of the airplane splint, but he had heard from Madge that morning and Laurie had seen his face as he read the letter.
“That’s it,” said Reg. He shut the bathroom door. They sat down on the large wooden board which, placed over the bath, made a table for scrubbing mackintoshes. Their embarrassment was enhanced by the precarious nature of their privacy. Laurie said, “Let’s have a fag on it,” and then, “I suppose I can guess.”
“No prizes offered,” said Reg with bitterness.
“It’s a damned shame,” Laurie said.
For a moment they were linked in a vague nostalgic coziness. Then Reg cleared his throat, and consciousness fell between them. Laurie said, “Same chap again?”
“That’s right. Offered her a job in his business now. Cooked meats and fish bar. Edgware way.”
“Not much future in that. Can’t you stop her?”
“Well, see, Spud, that’s it. Don’t hardly like to ask, but can you lend me seventeen and a tanner till next month?”
“I could.” As a matter of fact he was very short. “But what about asking the Major? Urgent private affairs?”
“Won’t wait till tomorrow,” said Reg, staring at the wooden bath mat. Laurie realized he hadn’t been told everything.
“French leave?” he said.
“I had about enough, Spud. I’m going today and fix it.”
Laurie looked at his face. “With the chap, you mean?”
“I’m going to fix it. Never mind the rest.”
Laurie took another look. The glasshouse, he thought, if nothing worse. Absurdly, the fact that he couldn’t spare the money kept obscuring his judgment; he felt he was being mean.
He said, “Reg, honestly. I wouldn’t do it.”
Reg leaned rather elaborately across the bath to throw his ash into the space behind. “Well, Spud, maybe not. It’s all according, see what I mean?”
His face was crimson. Laurie saw what he meant.
He was overcome by a sudden, stifling claustrophobia. Charles’s and Sandy’s friends had tried to lock the door on him from inside. Now Reg was doing it from out in the street. There was a difference: he liked Reg much better.
“Look, Reg, I’m not taking that.”
Reg stared at him in mute horror. “What you mean, Spud? Not taking me up wrong, I hope?”
“And what a hope. Not bloody likely. Now look, Reg, there’s nothing fancy about this, I know what you feel, like anyone else. It’s people that matter; if not, what are you worrying about, what’s Madge got that you can’t have for a bob against the railings? You care about someone and they let you down. It can happen to anyone; where’s the difference?” As soon as he had said it he knew that it wasn’t a hundred per cent honest argument, and perhaps didn’t deserve to succeed.
“That’s right,” said Reg slowly. “That’s true enough, Spud, you got something there. Forget what I said. Half silly with worry, that’s what.”
“I know.” He considered. No, he thought; Reg is the sort that prison would do something to forever, and she isn’t worth it. “Trouble is, Reg, now I think, I doubt if I’ve got seventeen and six, till I hear from home. I spent a bit in town.”
“That’s all right, Spud. Forget it.” To his surprise he saw a struggling respect fighting the disappointment in Reg’s face. “You hang on to that. Got to be independent. Make ’em think all the more of you.”
Suddenly Laurie got it. Christ, he said to himself, has Reg really been thinking … But he won and it was Reg who dropped his eyes. “Hell, Reg, what do you think I am?”
“You’re okay, Spud.” He knew it wasn’t the apology Reg minded, it was the exposure. “Knew that all along. Shoving my oar in. No offense meant, honest to God.”
At least, he thought, one could do something for Reg out of this ephemeral ascendancy. “Tell you what. Leave it for today. It can’t make all that difference.” He couldn’t help that, and Reg hadn’t spirit enough to resent it. “I’m going to do a bit of thinking. Okay?”
“Okay, then.” Laurie knew he had rushed Reg into this, chiefly by terror of what he might say next. They got up from the bath cover. Laurie stood holding the door, to make sure it didn’t swing back against Reg’s arm. Reg cleared his throat. He hung back. “ ’S okay, Spud. Shan’t be a minute.”
Reg’s prudery being what it was, there might have been many reasons for this; but this time something arrested Laurie and illumination struck him. Oh, no, but no, he thought in helpless protest: it really was, at last, too much; suddenly it collapsed into an outrageous joke. He stood in the doorway and rocked with laughter. “But it’s—” he gasped. He gazed at Reg and imagined him creeping coyly out after a discreet delay, like a femme galante at a houseparty. It was excruciating.
Reg was grinning sheepishly. He looked curiously comforted and relieved.
Laurie leaned in at the door. “I shouldn’t worry, Reg. If you like, I’ll give you a certificate.”
The post office was only ten minutes down the road. He pulled a telegraph form from the string-tied pad. Reg had had a couple of leaves in between operations; Laurie had written and forwarded letters, and knew the address by heart.
“Your husband’s condition grave please come immediately.” He signed it with the name of the hospital; Madge wouldn’t notice a thing like that.
An hour or two later, when it was too late to undo all this, he did what he had known he must, and went to warn the Sister. He would have thought poorly of her if she hadn’t been angry. “I’ve never known a patient take such a thing upon himself, never in all my years of nursing. Perhaps you’ll pay more attention to Major Ferguson in the morning. You’ve been here too long and you’ve got thoroughly above yourself.”
“Yes, Sister. I’m sorry.”
Luckily it was in the Staff Nurse’s duty period that Ralph rang up.
When the message came through he hesitated, wondering whether to send word by someone that he had just gone out. He hadn’t expected to hear from Ralph again.
On the morning after their last meeting Ralph had telephoned. They had been evasively facetious till it had stuck in both their throats; Ralph had approached the question of next Tuesday with awkward casualness; Laurie had said that he was sorry, this time he would have to get back. Ralph had taken it very quietly; there was no way of knowing what Bunny’s story had been. Now, to know that he had rung again, and was waiting, was full of excitement and inevitability, like a suspense story with a happy ending; but, he thought, still hesitating by his bed, there could be nothing but sadness in these perfunctory gestures of farewell. Involuntarily he felt at the leg-pocket of his battle-dress; he had got into the way of keeping the Phaedrus there again, as he had in the south coast training camp and afterwards in France. Now it no longer stood for something rounded off and complete, but for confusion and uncertainty and pain and compassion, and all the tangle of man’s mortality. And yet, he thought again, it was for such a world that it had been written.